Philippines

On 22 July, the Chinese press reported that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army is carrying out ten days of manoeuvres in the waters off the eastern island of Hainan in the South China Sea. China’s Maritime Safety Administration has stated that during the exercises, «no vessel is allowed to enter the designated maritime areas»...

As President Obama heads to Beijing for the APEC summ it next week , Harry J. Kazianis , Managing Editor of the National Interest , spoke with Dr. Ely R atner , a Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security to discuss U.S.-Chinese relations, China-Japan relations, the Trans-Pacific Partnership and more.

While referring to the ‘pivot’ strategy in Asia, Gen. John Paxton, assistant commandant of the Marine Corps posed a key question during a recent speech, «Do we [US] have enough people and enough ships to do it?» He lamented, «We are on our way… to a less than a 300 ship navy. We are on our way to a 175,000 man Marine Corps». According to Gen. Paxton, the Marine Corps needs 54 amphibious ships to do its job, while current plans call for only 38 and that too is likely to shrink to 33. He asked, «With the dollars we have, and the ships we have and the aircraft we have, and the people we have, are we going to be ready to do what we need to do?»...

The dust has settled down sooner than one would have thought on the US President Barack Obama’s 4-nation Asia tour, and the inevitable stocktaking is well under way. Obama earmarked an entire week for the trip to Japan, South Korea, Malaysia and the Philippines. Without doubt, it was a major statement of the Obama administration’s strategic foreign-policy reorientation. But that statement is already lending itself to varying interpretations... The salience of the tour came to be that China didn’t figure in Obama’s itinerary and this is at a time when Beijing has locked horns with America’s key allies in the East and South Asia Seas...

With the scramble for rare earth elements in the Pacific now underway, it was no coincidence that the U.S. Navy recently deployed the USS Freedom, the first prototype littoral combat ship, on its maiden voyage across the South Pacific to Singapore, a burgeoning U.S. naval base in the region that is seeing as much U.S. naval activity as the former U.S. naval base at Subic Bay in the Philippines...

The South China Sea is turning into an area of continuous territorial disputes. Not long ago, Beijing and Tokyo clarified their position regarding ownership of the Senkaku (Diaoyudao) Islands, and then news agencies followed the twists and turns of the Chinese-Vietnamese diplomatic struggle for the right to own the oil and gas reserves on the nearby continental shelf. Now the Philippines want to have a say...

In the XXI century the Asia-Pacific will not only be the world’s largest producer of goods and services, but also the world’s largest consumer of them. Obama has called himself «America's first Pacific president»... The US military buildup in the Asia Pacific is clearly emerging along with strengthening alliances and expanding military exercises. The United States has 320,000 troops in the Pacific region and the Department of Defense has promised there will be no reductions as troops are drawn down in Afghanistan and other parts of the world...

As Asia becomes more prosperous it spends proportionally more of its new wealth on defense. All regional actors get increasingly concerned about the ability to protect their economic interests to ensure sustainable growth. The disputed island territories are a lucrative asset to struggle for. With all the turmoil going on in the Middle East the Asia - Pacific is far from being calm seas too. This spring the tensions were high between China and the Philippines over the disputed Scarborough islands...

The conflict between Beijing and Hanoi over the energy reserves in the South China Sea, which had been simmering for a couple of months, entered a new phase when India's ONGC announced going ahead with the exploratory drilling on the Vietnamese shelf regardless of the threats voiced by China. The South China Sea shelf supposedly holds 30 billion tons of crude plus 16 trillion cu m of natural gas... It is clear that, on top of the conflict with Vietnam, China is headed for serious polemics with Taiwan, Malaysia, Brunei, and the Philippines which similarly can cite convincing foundations for claims to the disputed shelf...

On July 23, Prime Minister Boyko Borisov opened the Foreign Minister's annual meeting with Bulgarian ambassadors abroad. The event made it appear that he was not a citizen of Bulgaria and had no interest in making the country prosperous. Looks like he has an implanted chip with a special program making him pursue foreign interests instead of serving his homeland...